Queen Hortense eBook

Since Napoleon’s star had grown pale, and himself
compelled to leave France as an exile, life seemed
to Josephine also to be enveloped in a gloomy mourning-veil;
she felt that her sun had set, and night come upon
her. But she kept this feeling a profound secret,
and never allowed a complaint or sigh to betray her
grief to her tenderly-beloved daughter. Her complaints
were for the emperor, her sighs for the fate of her
children and grandchildren. She seemed to have
forgotten herself; her wishes were all for others.
With the pleasing address and grace of which age could
not deprive her, she did the honors of her house to
the foreign sovereigns in Malmaison, and assumed a
forced composure, in which her soul had no share.
She would have preferred to withdraw with her grief
to the retirement of her chambers, but she thought
it her duty to make this sacrifice for the welfare
of her daughter and grandchildren; and she, the loving
mother, could do what Hortense’s pride would
not permit—­she could entreat the Emperor
Alexander to take pity on her daughter’s fate.

When, therefore, the czar had finally succeeded in
establishing her future, and had received the letters-patent
which secured to the queen the duchy of St. Leu Alexander
hastened to Malmaison, to communicate this good news
to the Empress Josephine.

She did not reward him with words, but with gushing
tears, as she extended to the emperor both hands.
She then begged him, with touching earnestness, to
accept from her a remembrance of this hour.

The emperor pointed to a cup, on which a portrait
of Josephine was painted, and begged her to give him
that.

“No, sire,” said she; “such
a cup can be bought anywhere. But I wish to give
you something that cannot be had anywhere else in the
world, and that will sometimes remind you of me.
It is a present that I received from Pope Pius VII.,
on the day of my coronation. I present you with
this token in commemoration of the day on which you
bring my daughter the ducal crown, in order that it
may remind you of mother and daughter alike—­of
the dethroned empress and of the dethroned queen.”

This present, which she now extended to the emperor
with a charming smile, was an antique cameo, of immense
size, and so wondrously-well executed that the empress
could well say its equal was nowhere to be found in
the world. On this cameo the heads of Alexander
the Great and of his father, Philip of Macedonia,
were portrayed, side by side; and the beauty of the
workmanship, as well as the size of the stone, made
this cameo a gem of inestimable value. And for
this reason the emperor at first refused to accept
this truly imperial present, and he yielded only when
he perceived that his refusal would offend the empress,
who seemed to be more pale and irritable than usual.

Josephine was, in reality, sadder than usual, for
the royal family of the Bourbons had on this day caused
her heart to bleed anew. Josephine had read an
article in the journals, in which, in the most contemptuous
and cruel terms, attention was called to the fact that
the eldest son of the Queen of Holland had been interred
in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, and that the Minister
Blacas had now issued an order to have the coffin
removed from its resting-place, and buried in an ordinary
grave-yard.